


a boundary between the things misnamed

by aurilly



Series: Bucky Barnes, Master Sorcerer of Kamar-Taj [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Is a Sorcerer, Gen, Kamar-Taj (Marvel), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-27 05:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20754815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: After escaping Hydra at the end of TWS, Bucky befriends Jonathan Pangborn and winds up accompanying him on his quest to walk again. The quest takes them to Kathmandu and a place called Kamar-Taj, where it turns out Bucky is a key object of interest.(This series is written as somewhat disconnected, non-linear one-shots. They tell a larger story but can be read as standalones that start in media res.)





	a boundary between the things misnamed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laurus_nobilis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurus_nobilis/gifts).

Since the last time he'd moved, eight months ago, from a refrigerator in Washington DC to Queens, Barnes had acquired more luggage. "More" really meant "any". He hadn't grown so decadent and trusting as to actually check a bag, but he had a small duffel full of clothes and notebooks and toiletries, almost like a normal person. He'd kept it at his feet throughout three long flights to Nepal, in order to keep it close, even though it made stretching his long legs difficult.

He also had a Pangborn now; Jonathan was the heaviest, most fragile, and most troublesome of Barnes's new accessories. 

"Here, make yourself useful and hold these," Barnes said affectionately as he piled Jonathan's suitcase and his own duffel on Jonathan's lap. "How're you holding up?"

"I don't even know what day it is, so how do you think? Not all of us are super-soldier Communist robots." Jonathan had never been particularly pleasant in the morning; after thirty hours of coach travel, this was the most concentrated morning mood Barnes had seen him in since Jonathan had taken him in, months ago.

"Don't call me a Commie."

A blast of freezing wind made them hide their faces as the sliding doors leading to the arrivals pick-up area opened. 

"It's fucking freezing here," Jonathan complained as Barnes pushed the wheelchair through. "I thought this would be a nice hot vacation."

"You were the one set on coming here," Barnes said, looking around for the taxi stands. "Looking for your magic cure. You didn't think to check the weather first?"

"I didn't have time to. Not when we had less than a day to plan and get the hell out of New York, what with fucking latter-day Nazis or whoever's after you on our tail."

"Well, they're dead, and I don't think any more are on our tail. Don't make your lack of preparation my fault," Barnes argued. "Anyway, I packed your coat in your suitcase. I'll get it out when we get to the hotel. Wish I'd brought some masks, though."

They hadn't booked anything. They hadn't had time after the Hydra attack on Jonathan's apartment. But Barnes had done some research during the long flights while Jonathan had been passed out. He'd found a little hotel that didn't have a real website, and seemed a little too sketchy to fall on Hydra's radar, not that he thought they had followed him. 

During his research, Barnes had realized that he could read Nepali; he didn't yet remember learning it, but there were lots of things he didn't yet remember. It soon turned out he could understand spoken Nepali, too, and when he opened his mouth to respond to the taxi driver he'd hailed, what seemed to be the right words fell out of his mouth (he'd found with these unexpected language skills that not overthinking it was key). Jonathan hadn't been expecting that, and he shot Barnes an incredulous look he got picked up and deposited in the beat-up old car. 

As he'd hoped, the hotel he'd picked out was reassuringly under the radar, in a central part of the city in which it would be easy to get lost if Barnes had to make a run for it. Despite Jonathan's eagerness to get going, he passed out while Barnes was still hoisting the suitcases onto the stands in their room. Equally exhausted, and having already double-checked the escape routes, Barnes let himself take a nap, too. 

When they woke up, he asked, "Do you want to stay in the room, or should I leave you in the hotel restaurant?" 

"Where are you going?"

"To find this Kamar-Taj place."

"You think you're doing that without me? No way."

"What's your plan exactly? You don't even have an address. What are you going to do? Have me wheel you around Kathmandu asking strangers where or what Kamar-Taj is?"

"This was my idea." Jonathan's face got that set yet dreamy look it always did when he started talking about whatever hare-brained scheme of the week he was on to get his legs back. "You can't go find it alone. This is my quest."

"And it still is. But let me help you the way you helped me months ago when I was wandering around, lost and confused. I can speak the language here. I can find the place quicker and more quietly than you can. So, I'll say it again. Stay here. I'll be back. And then we'll go to Kamar-Taj together."

Barnes knew he'd been to Nepal once, for Hydra, but he didn't remember anything about it. But he'd visited enough new countries, been given enough location briefings, and completed enough search and destroy missions in his life to be able to navigate anywhere. Despite being half a head taller and half a body broader than most of the people he passed in the street, he made himself more compact and invisible in the way he'd been practicing ever since he'd escaped Hydra. He'd developed a sixth sense about what kinds of questions to ask what kind of person in the street. It took only a couple of tries asking café owners and produce mongers about this Kamar-Taj place before someone stepped out of the shadows and asked Barnes why he was asking.

"What do you know of Kamar-Taj?" the man asked. Sticking out yet blending in as well as Barnes did, he was a black guy in his forties with a serious attitude, who dressed like something out of one of the martial arts movies Jonathan liked so much. He stood and walked lighter on his feet than a guy that size should have, which pinged something in Barnes's brain as being _off off off_. 

"Because I have a buddy who's looking for the place," Barnes said, noncommittally. 

"A friend? Not you?" the man asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes. A friend. You know where I can find it?"

"It cannot be found without invitation." The man gave Barnes a once over, a twice over, a third inspection, just to be that much more overbearing. With a gentle air of magnanimity that, coming from anyone else, would have made Barnes roll his eyes and long to throw a punch, he finally said, But I will give you one. You may visit this afternoon. We will be expecting you, and your friend." 

He gave Barnes a piece of paper upon which was written an address, and disappeared into the shadows again.

Only halfway back to the hotel did it occur to Barnes that the guy might be full of shit, and have nothing to do with Kamar-Taj at all. But the thought dissolved as soon as it came to him; something about the guy, and especially the danger bells he'd set off in Barnes's mind, had him convinced, not necessarily that Kamar-Taj was everything Jonathan hoped it would be, but at least that the guy had given him the correct address.

Barnes scoped the place out before heading back to the hotel. Non-descript building in a questionable part of town, nothing fancy or mystical at all about the place, other than monk-like guys in robes flowing in and out. Barnes looked for the flattest way back to the hotel that would work with the wheelchair.

He found Jonathan on the roof deck of their hotel, with a beer in hand and a pretty redhead beside him. Probably the only redhead in all of Kathmandu, but Jonathan had found her. Barnes shouldn't have been surprised; game like Jonathan's couldn't be stopped by mere paralysis. Learned reticence made Barnes hang back, in a long shadow, until he saw her squeeze Jonathan's knee before going off to powder her nose or whatever girls said these days when they had to take a piss.

"Nice work," he said as he approached.

Jonathan shrugged, but he was smiling into his shoulder, pleased. "She's from London. Scouting for fashions or something. Anyway, what did you find?"

"North end of town, non-descript entrance, huge complex inside. We can come by today."

"Let's go."

When they got there, Barnes was in the process of raising his hand to knock when the door swung open. Wordlessly, two of the monks helped him hoist Jonathan's wheelchair over the lip of the heavy front door and into the cold courtyard. 

The place was even bigger on the inside than Barnes had guessed. A whole complex, with a garden and what looked like a training center in the middle, ranged with barracks on the sides. The place looked ancient, but also militarized. 

Barnes hadn't known at all what they were headed to when he'd bought the airline tickets and scrounged up some fake passports for the trip. All he'd been thinking about was how to get as far away from New York and Hydra as possible, as fast as possible. Now that he was facing their destination, he hoped he hadn't just volunteered to help his friend join a cult, throwing them into fresh new danger.

"Ask them who we need to talk to, or take classes from, or whatever it is you do here," Jonathan whispered. 

While Barnes was formulating a more coherent version of the question, and hoping it came out right in Nepali, the same guy who'd spoken to him in the street appeared beside him, getting the drop on them in a way that _no one_ usually was able. Barnes kept staring at the guy's boots; for all that they looked like they'd ben raided from a museum, he had a hunch they were semi-recent creations, highly engineered by top scientists. Barnes had been around enough cutting-edge tech that looked like shit for too many decades to be fooled: these things were special somehow. 

He took another glance at the long building between the barracks and wondered what it was that they _really_ did here, if it were some sort of lab. Everything about this place looked old, important, secret—a bland cover for something really big and powerful. It reminded him of Azzano, except that the denizens here looked dreamily calm, unlike the reeking misery of a prison camp. Whatever they were doing here wasn't evil, wasn't Hydra, but Barnes retained his misgivings. 

"There is no need for your friend to translate," the man said, half-smiling down at Jonathan with a kind of bland pleasantness, the way a dangerous person tries to look less dangerous. "Enough of us speak English here. My name is Mordo. And you are…?"

After Hydra had found him crashing at Jonathan's apartment, Barnes had decided they should both go by fake names, for Jonathan's safety. But Jonathan was a stubborn, willful bastard, and there was something about this Mordo guy, so Barnes wasn't surprised when he threw their previous agreement out the window and answered, "Jonathan Pangborn. Nice to meet you. I've come a long way for this."

"And what have you heard?"

"That you can help people do miracles. That you might be able to help me walk again."

"For some, we can. Though the way is hard, and not without sacrifice, fitting only for those ready to commit themselves to our order," Mordo said, which, hell, did sound like a fucking cult. "And what have you heard, friend? You have not yet given me your name."

"Anderson," Barnes lied, per the story that Jonathan had abandoned. "And I haven't heard anything except what Jonathan has told me. And I don't really care. He wanted to come, so…" He shrugged.

"Since you are the main visitor here, why don't I take you, Jonathan, into my study? I can explain in more detail what, exactly, we do here, and how it may help." He said it in such a way that made it clear it would be a private interview for a potential initiate, leaving the uninterested Barnes outside. 

He didn't like the idea of being separated from Jonathan in this place, but from the hopeful look on Jonathan's face, he knew he wasn't going to get his way. 

"I'll just sit out here until you're done," he acquiesced to the question Jonathan hadn't even posed. 

Mordo nodded and wheeled Jonathan off to one of the main building. Barnes sat on a bench in the courtyard and watched them go. For all that he felt misgivings about what was going on here—hell, utter blankness, since he still had no idea what it I was they were supposed to do—he enjoyed the view, liked the smell of the air here. It was as though they'd managed to filter out the horrific pollution that made everywhere else in the city a choking zone.

Someone in robes, holding a kettle, approached him. 

"Would you like some tea?"

Only when Barnes looked up and closely did he realize it was a woman. "No, thanks."

"I'll have some first if it makes you feel better. I promise it isn't poisoned," she said, with wry cheerfulness. 

"That's not what I—"

"It is what you would have meant had you examined your reasons for refusing it."

Barnes couldn't dispute this with any honesty, so he kept his mouth shut. But he did take the tea. He also noticed that Mordo looked back at her, as if for approval about something, and saw that she nodded gravely back.

Not everyone would have picked this up, but Barnes had a good feeling this lady was the boss. And a clever one, who pretended to be a nobody in order to throw people off. 

She touched a passing man wearing the kinds of robes everyone wore around here, and held the kettle out to him. "Would you take this for me, please, Master Kaecilius?"

Kaecilius gave Barnes the creeps, and looked like he wanted to pour the tea on the woman's head, but he held his tongue and did as he was told, giving even Barnes even more reason to suspect this woman ran this place. 

"You been here long?" he asked her when Kaecilius had retreated.

"You could say that, yes," she said without batting an eye.

"So, is it true? That people learn how to make their own dreams come true?"

"You don't believe in magic?"

Barnes thought back to the war, to the strange things he'd seen whenever Zola had had him wheeled into the same room as the cube. Things weirder than science, weirder than aliens in New York. Sights that had etched themselves into his very bones, until he'd come to believe literally anything might be possible. 

It was that very belief in magic that had made him so reluctant to share Jonathan's hope. There _was_ magic in the universe; Barnes believed that with everything he had. But he didn't believe that good could come of it. Even if it could, he didn't believe that poor bastards like himself and Jonathan could ever get a piece of it. Not without an even more crippling price than they'd already paid. Life wasn't fair like that. 

"I believe," was all he said aloud. 

"So, you have no need of a demonstration to convince you of our veracity?"

Barnes shrugged. "I'll take one, if you want to give it. But I'll warn you: I've seen magic. It takes a lot to impress me." 

She considered him. "What if I show you how to reclaim that which you thought was lost, that which you miss the most? Would that impress you enough to stay with us?" 

"My friend's the one who wanted to come here, the one who wants to stay. I'm just dropping him off."

"And what will you do afterwards?"

Barnes hadn't thought that far ahead. "Keep traveling, I guess," he said non-committally, even though the thought of going on the run again, all alone, depressed him. He was running from so many people—Hydra, Steve, himself. 

"You don't sound happy about it. All the more reason to stay." 

"There's nothing for me here. I'd just be in the way."

"You don't share his optimism? Even though you believe in general, you don't believe this place can help you?"

"My legs work fine." When he caught her looking at his arm, he added, "And there's no bringing that back."

"Yes, your physical body functions at a level far beyond peak," she said, clearly talking about something else.

"How do you know..."

"But is not the mind an organ? To be smashed and hurt, by accident or by design? If your friend's legs can be put back together, cannot also your mind?"

Barnes sprang off the bench and began backing towards the entrance to the courtyard. 

"We are not Hydra, Sargent Barnes," she said softly, from what sounded like entirely too near, even though she was at least twenty feet away by now, even though he hadn't given anyone here the name he'd only barely even begun to call himself.

"I have long watched you," she continued. "Since your earliest days, when the greatest magic you'd ever seen was in movies that hadn't yet advanced enough to include dialogue. Look."

As she said the last word, she stretched her hand out, and from across the courtyard, it felt like she gave him a push. The strongest, _deepest_—if that was a word he could use—push anyone had ever given him, which took a lot given that she was a spindly little thing and he was…

Well, maybe he wasn't, because suddenly Barnes was looking at himself from a few feet behind. Bulky frame, long hair, winter coat badly hiding the musculature of his prosthetic, jeans stretched perhaps overly-tight across thick thighs. Then he looked down at himself, at the two flesh arms he could see in a hazy shadow, strong but reasonably thin. He felt his face and head, pulling at the shorter hair he remembered getting from a barber in Rome, with Steve and Monty teasing him about his new look. He was his old self, Bucky Barnes from Brooklyn, a guy he had only recently begun to reclaim.

"This version of you has no reaction to trigger words. This version has all of your memories from before your capture," the woman's calm voice continued, as if from inside Barnes's head. "If you stay with your friend while we teach him to realign his body, we can teach you how to access this aspect of your self, which we call the astral self, to override your physical mind's rewiring. With training, you can keep the triggers at bay without effort, while retaining all the skills and memories you have accumulated since the war. You will pose no danger that you do not wish. And when you _do_ wish, your power will defy anyone who may try to reclaim you."

It was a pretty dream, even prettier than Jonathan's dreams of walking again. Perfect cult fodder. Barnes had no doubts that she could give him everything she promised, because, hell, here he was, staring at himself from a discorporated body he'd long ago lost. If that wasn't magic, nothing was. So, yeah, this was real, and he had only one question.

Also, just in case he'd maintained any further doubts, a whole bunch of trainees came out and started doing exercises with what looked like brass rings, of all things. Barnes had spent a second wondering what the hell they were doing, when the whole lot of them began to wave their hands and create sparkling circles out of thin air. 

"What's in it for you? Why do you want me so bad?" he asked, as soon as she'd undone her magic and put him back in his body. "Because you're the boss here, aren't you? If you're making this kind of play for me, it's because you need me for something."

She had the decency not to feign confusion. "I have seen your potential, Sergeant Barnes, and all of my arts say that you can be one of the brightest lights in the coming darkness. Never before have we trained someone of your strength and abilities. Never before have we had a master who comes to us with magic already flowing through his very veins.

There was something about this woman, or around this woman, that had been bugging him the entire time, calling to him in a way he hadn't felt called since Azzano. His eyes fell on the gaudy necklace she wore. They looked nothing alike, but something, _something_ about it reminded him of Zola and Azzano and all of it.

"It speaks to you, doesn't it?" she said, catching the direction of his gaze. "I have wondered if it might. Your powers come from its sister."

"The cube?" he asked, because at this point, he didn't see the point in hiding anything from someone who obviously already knew all. "What's that got to do with the cube?"

She opened a little latch to reveal a little green gem, like an LED emerald, glowing inside. 

"They are both infinity stones," she said, "created at the beginning of the universe. The cube, as you call it, the elemental power that you were connected to, shocked with, possessed by, is another. You, more than anyone on this planet, Sergeant Barnes, were made to help the universe face the challenges ahead. All you have to do is stay, and learn. If you do, we will allow your friend to earn his miracle, as well."

She talked a sweet and inspiring game, but Barnes knew an ultimatum when he heard one. If he refused her, she'd throw Jonathan out, leave him without hope, without this very real thing that might help him. 

It wasn't a choice. 

"I'm in."

She smiled and stood. "Welcome to Kamar-Taj, Master Barnes. I look forward to seeing what kind of sorcerer you become."


End file.
